San Diego  Ann Romney had tea with Republican women in San Diego Saturday, reminisced briefly about life on the presidential campaign trail, then faced a long line of people wanting her autograph on their copies of her new cookbook.

Romney spent the afternoon with about 350 members of the San Diego County Federation of Republican Women at the Kona Kai Resort on Shelter Island.

She was there to encourage the crowd to buy her cookbook, “The Romney Family Table,” which she described as “a great way for me to talk about family, about love.”

Sales proceeds, she said, go to the Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. Romney, 64, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998.

Simple, family recipes in the book are interspersed with her recollections of raising five boys with her husband, Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts who ran against President Barack Obama in 2012.

That election experience, Romney told the crowd seated at tables in a large hall at the resort, “was a huge disappointment, but you have to know 61 million people thought we were doing the right thing.

“I’d like to know what would happen if we held the election right now,” she added, getting a round of applause. “We might have a little different outcome.”

She said everywhere she went on the campaign trail, people told her they were praying for her and Mitt.

“I really felt the strength of that,” she said.

Romney said when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she went into a depression and felt her life was over. New medications eventually restored some of her health, but meanwhile her husband supported her emotionally, and took on extra chores, even cooking, she said.

“He’s forgotten how to cook now that I’m better,” Romney said, laughing. “I’m doing so well having my health back again. Now it’s my mission and purpose to help others.”